Conservative Daily News » Hans M. Kristensenhttp://www.conservativedailynews.com
The best conservative political news, analysis and opinion articles written by a collection of citizen journalists. Covering a range of important topics in blogs, op-ed, and news posts, these upstanding patriots are bringing back American exceptionalism with every entry..Sat, 28 Mar 2015 13:35:43 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.1Russia has repeatedly violated the INF Treatyhttp://www.conservativedailynews.com/2013/07/russia-has-repeatedly-violated-the-inf-treaty/
http://www.conservativedailynews.com/2013/07/russia-has-repeatedly-violated-the-inf-treaty/#commentsFri, 19 Jul 2013 12:00:13 +0000http://www.conservativedailynews.com/?p=92458

In 1987, the United States and the then Soviet Union signed the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which required both countries to completely dismantle all of their ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles – nuclear or conventional armed – that had a range between 500 and 5,500 kilometers.

No other nuclear power – not China, not India, not Pakistan, nor anyone else – was included in the treaty. However, it did at least require the Soviet Union to verifiably dismantle its medium-range ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles.

However, since Vladimir Putin came to power in Russia, Moscow has repeatedly violated the INF treaty.

It has tested and deployed the R-500 ground-launched (and nuclear-capable) cruise missile, which has a range within INF treaty limits, and last month, it tested a “missile defense killer” Rubezh/Yars-M “pseudo-ICBM” at a range of just 2,000 kilometers (1,242 miles) – again within INF treaty limits. This means it’s an intermediate-range missile, prohibited by the INF treaty.

The treaty, ratified in 1988 by both sides, completely prohibits any development or testing, let alone procurement or deployment, of ground-launched missiles of such range (between 500 and 5,500 kilometers).

Again, it bears repeating: even the development or testing, let alone the production or deployment, of such missiles is completely prohibited by the INF treaty.

The fact that the test occurred at a 2,000 km range was first disclosed by the Washington Free Beacon’s Bill Gertz, a veteran national security journalist, and confirmed by US intelligence officials as well as nuclear weapons expert Dr. Mark B. Schneider of the National Institute for Public Policy. Dr Schneider has been warning about Russian violations of arms reduction treaties for years.

Schneider has also warned that Russia’s air and missile defense missiles could be used as medium-range surface-to-surface missiles, and so could be the first stage of the SS-27 ICBM – as a stand-alone missile, it would have a 3,000 km range, clearly within INF treaty limits.

Also, the Republican chairmen of the House Armed Services and Intelligence Committees, Reps. Howard McKeon (R-CA) and Mike Rogers (R-MI), respectively, and chairman of the House Strategic Forces Subcommittee Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL), have been warning about Russian violations of such treaties for at least a year now.

The confirmation of Russia’s repeated violations of the INF treaty by the WFB and US intel officials confirms the soundness of their warnings.

Accordingly, the chairmen, not wishing to see America’s nuclear deterrent cut unilaterally, or in a worthless treaty with an untrustworthy partner who violates his obligations, have introduced amendments to the annual National Defense Authorization and Energy Appropriations bills that would prohibit ANY further reductions to America’s nuclear deterrent, except through a treaty or an Act of Congress itself.

American and foreign pacifist saboteurs, however, are not giving up. Desiring to see America disarmed, they continue to lie on Russia’s and Obama’s behalf, advocating for even deeper cuts than those Obama has proposed, and are whitewashing Russia to absolve it of its blatant violations of arms limitation treaties, including the INF treaty.

FAS’s Hans M. Kristensen, a Danish pacifist now living in the US, has recently written a FAS blogpost lying about the June 6th missile test, falsely claiming that the missile traversed over 5,500 kms, outside INF treaty range. He claims that the Washington Free Beacon and Dr Schneider merely “claim” the Russians have violated the treaty.

But, as US intel community officials have confirmed, the test actually occurred at a 2,000 km range, from Kapustin Yar to Sary-Shagan, meaning the test WAS a violation of the treaty.

By denying that a violation occurred, Kristensen is essentially accusing these officials, as well as the three House committee chairman (who have access to classified information, whereas Kristensen doesn’t and never will), and the WFB’s Bill Gertz of lying.

But why would Bill Gertz – a reputed journalist who has been covering national security issues for almost 3 decades – lie? And has anyone found even one instance in his long journalist career in which he lied?

On the other hand, Kristensen – a lifelong Danish pacifist whose explicitly stated agenda is to see the US give up its nuclear weapons – has a motive to lie, and indeed has repeatedly been caught lying, over and over again.

Kristensen is nothing but another anti-American, pro-Russian Danish pacifist propagandist. He’s been working for pacifist, anti-nuclear organizations since being 21 years old. He has no credibility and no integrity whatsoever.

Moreover, this is not the first time when Kristensen has (implicitly or explicitly) accused of lying people who are far more credible than he is. Not so long ago, he accused the commander of the USAF’s nuclear forces of hiding America’s nuclear modernization programs from PDF slides, even though these programs were all listed in one of the slides.

In short, Kristensen is a lying, dishonest, pro-Russian pacifist propagandist. Not one word he says is credible.

As for Russia’s recent missile test, the matter is quite simple. If the test did occur at a 2,000 km range, it WAS a clear violation of the INF treaty. If it occurred at a range of more than 5,500 kms, a violation did not occur.

US intel officials, Dr. Schneider, and the WFB’s Bill Gertz say the test did occur at a 2,000 km range.

Hans Kristensen denies that.

Whom will you believe?

UPDATE: The State Department’s annual arms control treaty compliance report completely omits – but does not deny – Russia’s violation of the INF treaty by testing that Yars-M (Rubezh) missile. Meanwhile, McKeon and Rogers continue to protest against further nuclear arms cuts and to criticize Russia for its noncompliance. They say the Obama administration has never addressed their concerns – neither publicly nor privately. Bill Gertz says more on that here.

But they are wrong. And as advocates of America’s unilateral disarmament, they have an incentive to lie, specifically, to minimize and downplay the Chinese threat.

And the Jin class is hardly an obsolete deterrent fit only for the 1960s.

Kristensen and Lewis base their false claims on two false arguments: that the Jin class is noisy, and that the range of its SLBMs is sufficient only to reach Alaska and Hawaii. Lewis has even said that he’s willing to sacrifice Anchorage (where two of my friends live) for Taipei.

But they are wrong.

While the first Jin class boat was indeed noisy, as depicted by the Office of Naval Intelligence, this is not a problem for the Chinese Navy. If the Jin class patrols in constrained, congested waters like the Sea of Japan or the Philippine Sea, it’s quiet enough to avoid detection in these noisy, congested waters where it’s hard to distinguish it from other naval vessels or from civilian ships.

And if it patrols in the vast swathes of the open Pacific Ocean, as I suspect it does, the vast size of that ocean – the largest body of water on Earth – makes it extremely hard to find a Jin class boat, because you don’t know where to look for it. To find it, you’d have to search the entire ocean, and no navy will ever have the resources to do that.

Moreover, in the last 11 years, the USN’s anti-submarine warfare skills have atrophied disastrously as a result of the DOD’s previous, obsessive singular focus on COIN wars. The Navy’s P-3 Orion crews, for example, have spent little time training for ASW, and almost all of their time conducting ISR missions over Afghanistan and Iraq. The P-3 Orion fleet has also shrank disastrously in numbers, its replacement (the P-8 Poseidon plane) has been delayed and orders are insufficient, and the S-3 Viking carrier-borne ASW plane has been retired. The Chief of Naval Operations himself has admitted that the Navy’s ASW skills have atrophied.

Such skills and capabilities will take many years, if not decades, to regain.

As for the JL-2, multiple sources confirm that the JL-2 has a range of 8,000 kilometers. That gives the Jin class the capability to target all of America’s West Coast – from Alaska all the way south to San Diego, and all cities and military facilities there – while staying west of 160 degrees east, far from the CONUS and not far from their homeport. To be within range of the entire West Coast of the CONUS, including San Diego, they’d have to sail just slightly east of Japan, to slightly more than 150E. To be within range of Seattle, they can actually stay west of Japan, in the Sea of Japan. To hit targets as far as Houston, they’d have to sail just slightly east of Hawaii.

This is far better than “a deterrent suitable for the 1960s”. China’s navy already has submarines and missiles that can target America’s West Coast while being relatively close to their homeport, west of 160E, thanks to the JL-2′s 8,000 km range. This is a feat that the Soviet Navy did not achieve until the 1980s.

When the first Soviet ballistic missile submarines wre commissioned and went on patrol, they had to patrol relatively close to America’s coasts – just 300 kms away from them. This was due to their missiles’ short range.

But as the range of Soviet ballistic missiles significantly increased, their subs became capable of launching these SLBMs far away from America and close to their homeports, north of the GIUK gap. These areas far away from the US, close to their homeports, were considered “bastions” by the Russians.

The deployment of Typhoon class SSBNs armed with long-ranged SLBMs gave the Soviet Navy the capability to hit the US while being in their homeports.

In the 1980s, the Delta I class, armed with the new SS-N-20 SLBMs, was able to target the CONUS while being far away from it and patrolling nearby Greenland and Alaska.

The deployment of even longer-ranged SLBMs gave Soviet submarines the ability to target the CONUS while being between Scotland and Greenland (the Yankee class) or north of Scotland behind the GIUK gap, as well as around Kamchatka and nearby Vladivostok in the Sea of Japan (the Delta II/III class). In other words, the Delta II/III class, with newer SLBMs, could stay close to its own homeports in the Pacific Ocean (Vladivostok and Petropavlovsk Kamchatsky), in home waters around Kamchatka and Vladivostok, and still hit the West Coast; or stay safely behind the GIUK gap and still hit the East Coast. The following map illustrates this.

But the Soviets didn’t achieve that feat until the late 1980s.

China has already achieved that feat. It has already achieved what the Soviet Union needed four decades to accomplish. As I stated earlier, the JL-2 SLBM’s range, 8000 kms, allows Jin class SSBNs to hit the entire West Coast of the US while still being relatively close to home, west of 160E. Here’s a map illustrating this. The area marked in red is the approximate area closest to China from where a Jin class boat could launch its SLBMs at any point on the West Coast. It’s just slightly east of 150E longitude.

In the 1980s, in the Soviet Union, newer, longer-ranged SLBMs such as the SS-N-23 and the R-29 Sinyeva gave the Russians even greater capability. By the late 1980s, their SSBNs could stay in homeport, or around it in home waters near the Kola Peninsula, and still hit the CONUS.

Of course, the Russian Navy’s even newer and longer-ranged SLBMs, the R-29M Sinyeva and the SS-NX-30 Bulava, have an even longer range. But the Russian Navy’s SSBNs can already hit most of the US while being in homeport or in Russian territorial waters.

In conclusion, the Jin class, which consists of 5 boats soon to be joined by a sixth one, is a very formidable deterrent, with the ability to hide in the congested, noisy waters nearby the Asian landmass and the vast swathes of the Pacific Ocean where the Navy wouldn’t know where to find it. Making the job even easier for China, the USN’s anti-submarine-warfare skills have atrophied and will take many years, if not decades, to regain. Moreover, the JL-2 SLBM’s long range (8000 kms) allows the Jin to target all of America’s West Coast while still being relatively close to home, west of 160E, just east of Japan.

And the further east, the further out to the Pacific Ocean the Jin class ventures, the more targets in the US its missiles can hit.

Furthermore, contrary to Hans Kristensen’s lie, the JL-2 can carry 3-4 warheads (or up to 8, according to MissileThreat.com), not just one. Each Jin class boat can carry 12-24 missiles, thus carrying up to 96 of them; so China’s 5-boat Jin class (soon to be joined by a sixth Jin) can carry at minimum 240, and up to 480, warheads.

In other words, Kristensen and Lewis have been proven dead wrong yet again. This is no surprise, because both of these anti-defense, anti-nuclear hacks have an agenda to lie (in this case, to minimize and downplay the Chinese nuclear threat), because any evidence that China is a greater threat than they admit would be a threat to their agenda of unilaterally disarming the US. Given that the Chinese nuclear threat is far greater than they admit, though, such an agenda would be downright suicidal and disastrous for the US.

Liberal advocates of Western disarmament, such as Daryl Kimball, Tom Collina, Jeffrey Lewis and Hans Kristensen (a lifelong Danish pacifist who now lives in the US) and their organizations claim that China has only 240 warheads. US intelligence agencies still hold on to their obsolete estimate of 300-400 warheads (first made in 1984).

But there is a large and growing body of evidence that they’re dead wrong by a huge margin.

In addition to the study released earlier this year by Georgetown University’s Professor Philip Karber and his team of analysts, and a growing body of evidence that China has far more missiles of all classes than is usually estimated, retired Russian general Viktor Yesin, a former SMF Chief of Staff, estimated in his study several months ago that China has 1,800 nuclear warheads (with enough fissile material for another 1,800), of which 900 are deployed and ready for use anytime, and he gave specific estimates of how many warheads are attributed to how many delivery systems.

In total, he says, China has 50 tons of highly-enriched uranium and plutonium, half of it already used in warheads. General Yesin has recently completed a follow-on study that confirms his previous findings.

He says China has over 200 strategic warheads capable of reaching US soil, and almost 750 tactical (theater) warheads, deployed anytime, or about 950 warheads in total. He has now also given precise estimates of how many are deployed on what missiles, and what their yield (force) is. Yesin estimates China’s DF-11 and DF-15 SRBMs have warheads with a 5-20 kT yield, while DF-21 Medium Range Ballistic Missiles and DH-10 Land Attack Cruise Missiles have 350 kT warheads; JL-2 Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles have 500 kT warheads, and its ICBMs have warheads of varied yields: 300 kT, 500 kT, and 2 MT.

Yesin also confirms that China has developed multiple independently retargetable vehicles (MIRVs) and is fielding MIRVable missiles. This is actually an understatement – China has had MIRVable DF-4 IRBMs since the 1970s, and MIRVable DF-5 ICBMs since 1981. What Yesin means are the DF-31A and DF-41A ICBMs, both now in service. He confirms that MIRVs have been deployed for DF-5s, DF-31As, DF-41As, and JL-2s.

Overall, he writes: “China’s nuclear arsenal is appreciably higher than many experts think. In all likelihood, the [People’s Republic of China] is already the third nuclear power today, after the U.S. and Russia, and it undoubtedly has technical and economic capabilities that will permit it to rapidly increase its nuclear might if necessary.”

Yesin understates the number of warheads deployed on China’s ICBMs (48) and MRBMs (99), though. The Washington Free Beacon quotes him thus:

“For missiles, the retired general said that “all told, 207 missile launchers are deployed within the Strategic Missile Forces—48 with ICBMs, 99 with [medium-range ballistic missiles] MRBMs, and 60 with [short-range] SRMs.” Total strategic warheads—those capable of reaching the United States—include 208 nuclear warheads, Yesin said.”

This is an understatement: China has 30-36 DF-5, at least 30 DF-31A, and an unknown number of DF-41 ICBMs, all of them MIRVable. Assuming that there are 72 warheads for DF-5s, 90 for DF-31As, and 10 for a single DF-41, that makes 172 warheads for ICBMs alone. China also has 80 DF-21, 20 DF-3, and 20 DF-4 MRBMs. Even if all of them are single-warhead missiles, that still means 120 MRBM warheads.

In total, this means 292 ICBM/MRBM warheads, not merely 147.

Based on open sources, China’s delivery system inventories and their warhead delivery capacities are as follows:

Warhead delivery system

Inventory

Maximum warheads deliverable per system

Maximum warhead delivery capacity

DF-5 ICBM

36

At least 2

72

H-6, Q-5, and JH-7 aircraft

440

1

440

DF-31

30

3-4

90

DF-41

1?

10

10?

DF-3

20

1

20

DF-4

20

3

60

DF-21

80

1

80

JL-1

12

1

12

JL-2

120

4

480

DH-10 nuclear armed LACM

?

?

?

DF-11/15 nuclear armed SRBM

1,600

?

?

Total

1,119

Various

1,264

As you can see, China has at least 1,119 intercontinental and medium range nuclear delivery systems capable of delivering, collectively, 1,264 warheads. And that’s assuming, conservatively, that no LACMs or SRBMs are nuclear-armed, and that China has only 1 DF-41 ICBM on duty. If China has more, or if at least some of its LACMs and SRBMs are nuclear-armed, China’s warhead delivery capacity is even greater.

“The Russian specialists quoted in the report have credibility because of Moscow’s past and current role in China’s nuclear program. Russia’s Strategic Rocket Forces also has good intelligence on China’s nuclear arsenal because it targeted China for three decades. This close proximity and long track record means that Russian ‘realism’ about Chinese nuclear force potential cannot be blithely ignored or discounted as ‘paranoia. Their warning against American ‘idealism’ [on China’s nuclear arms] needs to be taken seriously.”

The US -China Economic and Security Review Commission is now slowly (albeit too slowly) beginning to wake up, acknowledging that China may have more warheads than just 300, and saying that it may have as many as 500. It still, however, wrongly believes that 240 is the most likely size of China’s arsenal, despite a large and growing body of evidence to the contrary. Furthermore, it understates the threat from China’s sea-based nuclear arsenal, claiming that:

“China has had a symbolic ballistic missile submarine capability for decades but is only now on the cusp of establishing its first credible, ‘near-continuous at-sea strategic deterrent.’”

This is a huge understatement: China is not “only now on the cusp of establishing its first credible, near-continous at sea strategic deterrent” – it has already established a fully continous naval nuclear deterrent. It has 1 Xia class SSBN (with 12 single-warhead JL-1 missiles) and 5 Jin class SSBNs (with 12-24 multiple warhead JL-2 missiles each). Furthermore, while JL-1 has only a 2,400 km range, the JL-2’s range is 8,000 km, allowing the Jins to target the entire US West Coast from a position just slightly east of 150E longitude. (See the map below.) Six SSBNs, assuming 61 days of patrol per sub, give China a fully continous deterrence capability for 366 days/year.

The Xia class boat is due to be replaced soon by a sixth Jin class boat. The Jins’ long-range missiles, as stated earlier, allow them to target the entire West Coast from places just east of Japan (and Houston from a position slightly east of Hawaii). That capability was not reached by the Soviet Union’s subs until the 1980s. So China has already accomplished what the USSR needed four decades to achieve.

Nonetheless, the Commission does warn against any further uni- or bilateral (with Russia) cuts in America’s nuclear arsenal, rightly admonishing the Obama government to:

“treat with caution any proposal to unilaterally, or in the context of a bilateral agreement with Russia, reduce the U.S.’s operational nuclear forces absent clearer information being made available to the public about China’s nuclear stockpile and force posture.”

Yet, disarmament advocacy groups and their spokesmen, such as those mentioned above, unrepentantly continue to falsely claim that China has only 240 warheads, and only 50 capable of reaching the US, and hasn’t expanded its arsenal since the 1980s; they furthermore deny that China will have 75 ICBMs capable of reaching the US by 2015 (when China already has more than that as of AD 2012). So why do they continue to minimize and downplay the Chinese threat?

Because they overtly advocate America’s unilateral disarmament, including deep unilateral cuts as a first step. They don’t care about the consequences; in fact, they believe (and falsely claim) that this would make the US more secure, even though disarmament and arms reduction have never made anyone who indulges in them more secure, only less.

They don’t care about Russia’s, China’s, and North Korea’s nuclear buildups and have no problems with that, or with these countries’ development of new strategic weapons such as Russia’s next generation bomber, the PAK DA, new RS-24 (SS-29) ICBM, or planned new heavy ICBM, the “Son of Satan”, planned for 2018. Meanwhile, they demand that the US cancel any plans to develop a next generation bomber or ICBM, dramatically cut its existing nuclear stockpile plus ICBM and ballistic missile submarine fleets, and cut orders for future SSBNs. They claim that if America makes these deep unilateral cuts, Russia will be nice enough to reciprocate, or at least stop the expansion or modernization of its own arsenal.

Similarly, during the Cold War, they had no problem with the Soviet Union developing new strategic weapons and producing them in large numbers – they objected only to America’s development and procurement of such weapons.

All they want is America’s total nuclear disarmament.

But in order to get the public to support such policy, they first have to mislead the public into thinking that this can be done safely, i.e. to lull the public into a false sense of security.

Thus, they shamelessly lie to mislead the public into thinking that the deep cuts they advocate can be done safely, because China supposedly has only 240 warheads. They claim this means that the US can safely cut its nuclear arsenal to the low hundreds.

And, predictably, they reacted furiously to facts-based, objective studies of China’s nuclear arsenal by Professor Karber and General Yesin, because these studies and the facts contained therein constitute a huge threat to their agenda of unilaterally disarming the US. (My own study, published on November 5th, hasn’t gotten much attention yet, but if it does, it will likely be attacked just as savagely. Which won’t change the fact that every statement made therein is true.)

These studies show that China’s nuclear arsenal is highly likely to be far larger than what these liberal pro-disarmament groups falsely claim, and by informing the public and presenting evidence to back these claims up – fissile material stockpile estimates, the length of secret tunnels for missiles, estimated numbers of missiles that China has – utterly refute the myth that China has only a few hundred warheads.

And US intelligence agencies? They continue to cling to their obsolete 1984 estimate of China’s arsenal for two reasons. Firstly, like other bureaucracies, they’re embarassed to admit being wrong. And secondly, they (like the rest of the US government) are run by pro-China officials who delude themselves that Beijing can be a great partner and thus don’t want to do anything to counter China, or even to tell the truth about its reali military capabilities.

But China is a foe of the US, and intellectual disarmament always precedes actual disarmament.